Overpow.org .ENT tools - basic guide

Member

Hello everyone,
Lately some of you started asking me in-game to explain how these tools work, I realized its a bit complicated and there is no real "Tutorial" about them..
I will do my best to explain (though I'm not known as being good explaining stuff...).
just a heads-up, this is not a editing tutorial!, If you are new to map editing and want to learn how its done go check out Editing Tutorials thread,
If you already know how to edit, these tools can make your life easier. Well let us get started!

Requirements:
- Text Editor (to edit the ".ent" map files, the ones that comes with your operating system will do (notepad, TextEdit etc..)
but for comfortablity here are some I recommend: Notepad++, Sublime Text 3, Atom just pick one (Optional), they will all do the job.
- Basic .ent editing knowledge you can start from this thread HERE by @hansvanwillekom.
- English, I cannot speak arabic unfortunately, If someone can translate this would be much appreciated.
- The tools, I host them on a website for the time being overpow.org but they will not be there forever! thus I recommend downloading the desktop app.
Also you can check the original thread by @SplashHere, for update logs etc.. (first comment).

Tools:
First, head over to overpow.org.
now you can choose if you want to use the tool online or download it to your desktop for offline access.
for the sake of this tutorial, I will use the website itself (although its pretty simmilar).

Once you are in the website head over to Tools>.ENT Generator

now you should see a screen with a form to fill, no need to panic, I'll explain what each component does and how it works.
so first, you see different buttons:
Clicking any of those will open addtional options for each component, now lets go over them:
- Spawns: Spawn points for Red, Blue and Deathmatch teams.
- Instances: These are "bspmodels" you can add to your map (like green boxes, fences etc...)
- Models: Objects that you can see but has no collision ("model_static" classname) like Grass, Trees, Vehicles etc..
- Classnames: These are basically objects that are embedded into the map, each has a unique number (See THIS thread also by @hansvanwillekom for more info).

Now you see the main form:
It is best to explain with an example:
so I open my home-made server running 1fx mod and get into a map in developer mode (type in console "devmap mapname")
for this example I will use the map "inf.ent":
Now this is where most people get confused, I'll try to apply some photoshop to make it a bit clearer.
What you want to do, is visualize a rectangled box with 2 corners making it:

so in-game you should get 2 positions with the command "/viewpos", each point will represent a corner of the rectangle:
It doesn't matter which 2 points you give it first, as long as they are 2 opposite corners, the tool will automatically fill in the rest.
So you can fill in the origins A & B, If you want to follow this example:

Origins:
Origin A: (-175, -1160, 500)
Origin B: (375, -362, 700)

Angles:
(0, 0, 0)
then you have the angles, they are used to rotate an object on its axes (roll - x, pitch - y & yaw - z) from the center of the object, I'm not using any here (you can leave blank for 0).

Offsets:
(64, 64, 64)
An important step is setting the offsets, first let me explain what is an offset:
offset is the distance between the centers of objects on the corresponding axes.
the Crates instance is 64*64*64 in size which means if i add 64 to each offset, I will get the exact distance between the crates, if I increase it to lets say 200, 100, 64 it will look something like this:
You can see that the middle is missing here, that is because the tool generate boxes only on the outline of the rectangle you created.
to disable this just untick the little checkbox called "outline":
into
(this is usefull for spawns)
also the shape will not shift, as you can see the rectangle size is the same, but because i increased the offsets (distance between models) it placed less boxes and more air between them.

*Take into consideration that the game cannot handle more than 256 entities of the same type in a single map!
what that means is that if you filled your box with too many objects they will either not render or simply crash the map.
just try to avoid it, I added a warning pop-up when you generate more than 255 entities in the tool to help you gauge the amounts you use.
(hope this clears out the confusion.. this is not a bug with the tool but the way the game has been programmed.

If you have come this far, you are pretty much done, the only thing thats left, is picking what you want to spawn into your rectangle, I chose Instances> "generic/pickup_crate_armor"
after that, you click on the
button and the code will appear below, you can click the "Copy" button to copy the code and paste it into your .ent file
Save and restart the map to see the changes!

Stairs:
Start by ticking the the checkbox called "Stairs" (as of version 1.3.0) which will open up addtional options:
I like to call this feature "Stair mode", behind the scenes what this does is duplicate the rectangle you've made and add addtional values each time, for example:
I will use the same map and make a new shape (please note im not putting it in my ent file yet, this is just for example purposes)Direction: X/Y, basically the axes in which you want the next "staircase" to move on (x or y),
In this case i wanna move it on the "X" axes which is towards the upper right corner of the pictureAmount: How many duplicates of the specified rectangle you want? (defaults to "2"),
my Amount will be "3" to create 3 duplicates (Including the first one which technically isn't generated yet)Forward: This is the same as "offset" but for the whole shape, lets say i have a 100*100 area full of boxes, it will create a distance between the 100*100 areas Forward/Backward (positive or negative),
I'll move it 300 forward (+x in this case).Up: Same as forward but for Up/Down (negative or positive),
and ill move it up 400 (z+).

this is how I end up:

Obviously most poeple would use this tool for smaller platforms and probably 1-level platforms too, but in order for you to understand how this works
I demonstrated it using a 3-Dimensional rectangle
here's an example for a normal use of the "stairs" feature:

The End!

These are all the current features of this tool (as of August 7th 2018), they could save you an incredible amount of time if you edit alot.
Things that used to take up a few hours to do I can manage in just a few minutes now! alot of the editing process is repetitive and boring,
making this staircase in the picture above, took me like 60 seconds, more or less.
I hope you gain as much as I do from these tools.
Happy, efficent, and hopefully faster editing guys!

Member

I'm working for a company that builds websites for clients, so I have a GoDaddy account there (as long as I work there) with unlimited domain names
I used one for myself but as soon as I'll leave there they will deactivate all personal domains (which I'm supposed to use for testing) and in a few months
I'll leave for a trip in south america for like 6 months so pretty sure they will deactivate my user then. and idk if I will go back there XD

3D# General

I'm working for a company that builds websites for clients, so I have a GoDaddy account there (as long as I work there) with unlimited domain names
I used one for myself but as soon as I'll leave there they will deactivate all personal domains (which I'm supposed to use for testing) and in a few months
I'll leave for a trip in south america for like 6 months so pretty sure they will deactivate my user then. and idk if I will go back there XD